Regular disk errors even after reformat!

This seems to happen about once per month, but if I run a disk utility on my MacBook Pro (M1), I get disk errors. They are typically about no anode referencing doc-ids. This is the current one:


Checking the fsroot tree.

error: doc-id tree: record exists for doc-id 270112, file-id 20341051 but no inode references this doc-id

error: doc-id tree: record exists for doc-id 270115, file-id 20358178 but no inode references this doc-id

...

The volume /dev/rdisk3s1 was found to be corrupt and needs to be repaired

...

error: doc-id tree record exists for doc-id 270112, but no inode references this doc-id

Skipped 2/2 repairs of this type in total.

The container /dev/disk0s2 appears to be OK.


This is beyond frustrating. I have reformatted and restored data from cloud backups or physical backups each time, but it is incredibly time consuming. The disk itself has the following properties:


The disk itself is a 4TB SSD with "SMART Status: Verified". But this. Keeps. Happening. I see no explanation for it, but I noticed today that multiple files have gone missing which is a clue something is up.


Is it possible the drive itself is broken??


The only thing I can think of that could cause this is I did connect a failing external drive to it to try to lifeboat some files and it caused the entire laptop to shutdown, fans whir, etc. That corrupted the drive. However, I did a reformat and it was fine for about a month until this started happening again (and again, and again). Each time I reformat and the problem comes back after about a month.


I'm not doing anything unusual on my machine. Is it possible that normal use could cause this? Help?


PS: my spouse has wondered if I have corrupted data somewhere in a file that then corrupts the HD, so restoring from backup --> corrupts the drive again. That doesn't seem to make senes to me, but is that a possibility?

MacBook Pro 14″

Posted on Mar 22, 2023 11:49 PM

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Posted on Mar 23, 2023 5:52 PM

Try to "Restore" the firmware to see if you still get the corruption. Unfortunately you will need access to another Mac running macOS 12.4+. If you still have the issue after restoring the firmware, then you most likely have a hardware issue which will need repaired (most likely the Logic Board since the CPU, memory, and SSD are all integrated into the Logic Board). FYI, a firmware "Restore" will destroy all data on the internal SSD. This is usually the last troubleshooting step before a repair.


Out of curiosity, you can try checking the SMART health attributes of the SSD. Unfortunately there are very few health attributes on the newer SSDs, but it would be interesting to see them. Normally I suggest using DriveDx, but the download button has been broken for over a month now even after I reported the issue to them. The next best option is to use SMARTReporter to get the health information from the SSD. Within SMARTReporter, click "Disk Checks" button at the top of the app window, then select make sure the "S.M.A.R.T" tab just below is selected, and finally selecting "Advanced Tools" tab in the middle of the window. Click on "Show Attributes" button for the desired drive. Copy all the text within that window showing the health information and paste it into the "Additional Text" tool whose icon looks like a piece of paper.


FYI, these types of drive health monitoring apps work well for assessing the health of a hard drive, but need to have the information manually reviewed for SSDs to know whether an error or warning condition is actually an issue or just something to keep an eye on. Not all warnings or errors with drive health information is fatal when it comes to SSDs. In fact I have kept using many SSDs for years that had reported errors (some are SSDs which had macOS show as "SMART status failed"). Unfortunately even someone experienced at interpreting SSD health information has trouble really knowing when some errors are really a problem or not since the information being reported these days by recent SSDs is so limited.

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Mar 23, 2023 5:52 PM in response to TCarpenter216

Try to "Restore" the firmware to see if you still get the corruption. Unfortunately you will need access to another Mac running macOS 12.4+. If you still have the issue after restoring the firmware, then you most likely have a hardware issue which will need repaired (most likely the Logic Board since the CPU, memory, and SSD are all integrated into the Logic Board). FYI, a firmware "Restore" will destroy all data on the internal SSD. This is usually the last troubleshooting step before a repair.


Out of curiosity, you can try checking the SMART health attributes of the SSD. Unfortunately there are very few health attributes on the newer SSDs, but it would be interesting to see them. Normally I suggest using DriveDx, but the download button has been broken for over a month now even after I reported the issue to them. The next best option is to use SMARTReporter to get the health information from the SSD. Within SMARTReporter, click "Disk Checks" button at the top of the app window, then select make sure the "S.M.A.R.T" tab just below is selected, and finally selecting "Advanced Tools" tab in the middle of the window. Click on "Show Attributes" button for the desired drive. Copy all the text within that window showing the health information and paste it into the "Additional Text" tool whose icon looks like a piece of paper.


FYI, these types of drive health monitoring apps work well for assessing the health of a hard drive, but need to have the information manually reviewed for SSDs to know whether an error or warning condition is actually an issue or just something to keep an eye on. Not all warnings or errors with drive health information is fatal when it comes to SSDs. In fact I have kept using many SSDs for years that had reported errors (some are SSDs which had macOS show as "SMART status failed"). Unfortunately even someone experienced at interpreting SSD health information has trouble really knowing when some errors are really a problem or not since the information being reported these days by recent SSDs is so limited.

Mar 25, 2023 10:39 AM in response to TCarpenter216

Good job figuring out the reason for the Restore failure. Apple's cryptic error messages are a real pain especially using procedures like this which don't allow you any way to tell what is happening. The Apple Configurator interface is less than ideal as well.


I hope it resolves those errors, but from what I've seen with the USB-C Macs (2018+), the issue is almost always an expensive Logic Board failure. I really hope I'm wrong for your sake.


Good luck.

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Regular disk errors even after reformat!

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